labyrinth
by fiesa
Summary: Arrival (2016). What surprises her most is that she is surprised. OneShot- Louise Banks, Ian Donnelly. (On memories of the past and the future and something in between.)


**labyrinth**

 _Summary: Arrival (2016). What surprises her most is that she is surprised. OneShot- Louise Banks, Ian Donnelly. (On memories of the past and the future and something in between.)_

 _Warning: Spoilers for the movie. Drabble-esque, fractured. The structure is on purpose._

 _Set: post-movie._

 _Disclaimer: Standards apply._

 _On a personal note, for me, this was one of the best movies 2016._

* * *

 **Coda**

He simply appears in her life, one day, quoting her own words back at her and smiling at her over the din of the helicopter. A bespectacled, blond man with unruly hair and gentle, grey eyes. Louise doesn't realize right then, but she knows later.

 _Forever._

* * *

 **First Movement, Allegro**

No linear correlation, no linguistic theorem.

Nothing like love at first sight: over the time they spend together, she gets to know him. Learns to love him, learns to _see_ him. Her love deepens with every day they work together, every day they share, first in the army camp in Montana, then while they keep seeing each other, then, after they move in together. After he proposes. After their wedding. It's like he carries with him the best pieces of her – or he brings out the best in her – and for that, and for everything he was, is and ever will be, she loves him. Never loved him more than now.

...

"Louise."

His arms are strong and familiar, folding around her like _home._ His breath at her ear, his hair soft and silky underneath her fingers. She can feel the glass of champagne fizzing in her veins, the warmth of the wind from the ocean, the feeling of comfortable satisfaction after the meal. The music is in her head and on her skin and in his hands. They have shifted to slow moves now, are just swaying and turning to the music that is still playing, softly, and the feeling of his arms around her is something she won't ever be able to put into words, her ability with languages nonwithstanding.

Her answer is barely a whisper. "Ian."

He holds her tighter. The sun breaks through the clouds, dazzles her, Louise closes her eyes and only _holds_. His voice carries the same gentle tone it carried when he told her why he never had a serious relationship before, the same note when he said if given the chance to live again he would speak about his feelings more often. It is the same voice he used when he asked her to marry him: a mix of self-irony and playful teasing, and yet so painfully filled with honesty.

"Do you want a baby?"

She has seen this moment before. She has lived it. Ian is holding her like he will never let her go, and that is one of the reasons why she will always choose the same path, over and over again.

"Yes."

Her eyes meet his.

 _His eyes are full of blame and questions he never wanted an answer to._

 _"_ _Is that what you meant when you said, you remembered why your husband left you?"_

 _It's so random she doesn't understand, at first. Then it dawns on her. Ian, tall, lean, his gentle grey eyes hard and unforgiving, and she cannot see herself mirrored in them anymore. What surprises her most is that she is surprised in the first place._

 _(She doesn't forget anymore, not anything.)_

 _Ian is a scientist. He might not have a perfect memory, but he notices the small things, the necessary ones. He must have spent nights mulling over their relationship, nights and days thinking over how he couldn't have noticed, how he never realized. Louise knows she put him through something terrible but she can't bring herself to regret it, it was something she needed – and, at the same time, something she wanted to protect him from. He must have gone back to the start in order to realize the glitches in their relationship. And he remembers. His brain might not have understood back then but nevertheless filed the information away for later, and finally, when he needed it, he recalled. He always noticed everything about her. It is one of the things she loves most in him: he notices when she is feeling tired, or when she is trying to pretend. Maybe it's because he never pretends, himself._

 _(Maybe, his exposure to her and the heptapods has sparked something in him, as well, and while it might not have given him the same ability as she has, his brain structure would have changed, too. Maybe it's that. Maybe…)_

 _There is nothing she has not said, no excuse, no apology, no angry accusation. She has seen it all, over and over again._

 _She still says it, still feels the tears behind her eyes that she refuses to cry._

 _"_ _I'm sorry."_

 _"_ _Dammit, Louise!"_

 _His hands come up, card through his hair, his fingers lace behind his neck and he closes his eyes to take a deep breath. She has seen it so many times, has seen him so many times, and yet each time is a new revelation._

 _"_ _I don't want your apology. I just want to know – I have no idea – I – just – Louise." His helpless, directionless anger shifts to desperation and she so desperately wants to hold him, touch him, feel his hair under her fingers, his skin on hers._

 _"_ _Why didn't you tell me!"_

 _It's not a question, even if it's one she answered before._

She does not tell him this.

Hannah enters her life, smiling, crying, sleeping. Beautiful. Growing, always changing, like light on the path that wakes in the morning and changes until night, disappears during the darkness but always returns. Never far, always close, infuriating and amazing and so, so precious. Hannah is born and the first months are a flurry of no-sleep and sleep and change and work, and Louise always thought-

"You know, I always thought this would be the hard part."

Ian looks at her, his eyes incredibly warm in the light of the fire place. Hannah is asleep on his stomach, her little eyes closed, her little fists moving slightly. She is dreaming, or maybe not. Louise cannot look at her without wanting to hold her. Her arms ache with the emptiness. But Ian – _Ian_. Ian and Hannah, her family, her beautiful, precious, wonderful family.

"What would be hard?"

"You know."

She remembers the time she had when her younger brother was born, when she was ten years old and her mother became pregnant again. The screaming, red baby, plagued by stomach aches, the hours at night when Louise could hear her mother sing to her baby brother. Her father was gone so often, business trips, her mother would go to bed right away after dinner and Louise would be left to herself. On other days she had to take care of her baby brother herself, change nappies and prepare milk and sing him to sleep. And while she did not mind – she loves her baby brother very, very much – she always thought having a baby would be hard. Hard _er._

Ian shifts a tiny bit. Hannah sighs in her sleep but does not wake.

And Louise can feel his hand on her leg; warm, comforting.

"But it isn't?"

"Not…" She hesitates. "Not as much as I expected."

"Is that good or bad?"

"Good. I think."

Ian laughs – softly, silently. His eyes look at her and right into her heart.

"You're not alone in this."

She smiles back, a mixture of relief and guilt and love so strong she wants to cry.

"I know."

What, she wonders, will he say when he realizes what she has been keeping from her all this time? But Ian only smiles at her, warm and gentle, and in the light of the fireside she nestles into his side and closes her eyes.

Hannah is a miracle.

Louise's beautiful, wonderful daughter, light of her life, her guiding star, so much like her father. She has eyes that are more green than grey, more filled with mischief than with gentleness. But the way she regards the world around her like one great mystery, one grand adventure to go on. She is Ian, a different version of him, a tiny copy and yet a human being in its own right. Louise loves her so much her heart feels like breaking. The greatest gift and the worst pain in her life, a _yes_ when there should have been a _no_ which she so selfishly, so stubbornly – so full of _everything_ – denied. But she does not regret it.

The question is: is time that is limited still taken as for granted as time that is seemingly endless? Did she ever love Hannah more or less than she would have had she not known? The question is: is this even the question?

It does not sound like one, though it is.

 _"_ _You should have told me right from the beginning."_

 _They've had this conversation before. Once, twice, a million times, sometimes she's not even sure whether she remembers the vision of their arguments or their arguments themselves._

 _Louise feels tired._

 _So, so tired._

 _"_ _But."_

 _She cannot look at him, cannot see her pain mirrored in his eyes. It feels like a wave building, growing and growing, gathering strength, ready to crash at any moment. If she looks at him now, she knows, the wave will come down. And she won't be able to bear it._

 _Everything breaks, a voice whispers in her head. Ian, ages ago. At that moment, his smile was wistful._

 _Louise watches a flock of geese pass by in a tight formation. It feels like fall now, too._

 _"_ _Yeah."_

 _"_ _Goodbye, Louise."_

 _Wait._

 _"_ _Where are you going?"_

 _The wrong question._

 _"_ _Back."_

 _The wrong answer._

 _A shrug. She wonders, briefly, whether he sees his answer in the same way she does: the deeper meaning, the truth hidden underneath his anger and her silence and the pain that once brought them together and now divides them, that wall so invisible and without substance and yet more final than anything._

 _She does not answer._

 _He walks away._

...

It's him or nobody, she always knew. But if it isn't him, it's not like she will die.

Ian leaves her life the way he entered it. In a way, his absence is the absence of something she never had – a phantom pain, there, _painful,_ but not suffocating.

What suffocates her is the darkness, at night, when Hannah's asleep and she's alone. There is an Ian-shaped part of her heart that is missing, a loss so profound she thinks she might not be able to go on. But, at the same time, she knows she will. She's seen it all before.

 _Come back to me_ , a voice whispers in the back of her mind, _please come back_.

But whom are these words directed towards?

* * *

 **Second Movement, Fermata**

Gone.

Ian leaves her life the way he entered it: silently, softly, like the sea softly lapping onto the beach. Erasing tracks without leaving new ones. Walking out, word- and soundlessly, taking with him the best of her. Leaving behind a daughter with wide eyes mirroring betrayal and love so acutely Louise thinks she should cry, but she cannot. How can a human being live with a part of his heart missing? She never was one for the scientific questions, those had always been Ian's responsibility.

Louise can only translate and connect.

...

"Mommy, is Daddy angry with me? Is that why he's not there anymore? Won't he come back?"

"Your Daddy loves you very, very much," she says and smiles, because it is the only thing that she can do in order to soothe her daughter. "He left because I told him something he did not want to hear. But, love, he would never hate you. Please believe me."

"Can I still go and see him?"

"Yes, you can, love. Every weekend, if you want to." She owes him that, at least. She owes it to Hannah.

"But, Mummy, not every weekend. I want to spend time with you, too!"

Louise hugs her daughter, and then picks her up and whirls her around, and Hannah screams in joy and laughter. The time they have, she thinks, will never be enough, but it is time, at least. It is the time she will remember, because the white hospital walls and the scent of disinfectant and illness is nothing she wants to think of when she thinks of her daughter.

Hannah, so alive, so beautiful, with her eyes like her father's and her temper like her mother's and the light in her face shining so brightly. It is this Hannah Louise wants to remember, not the girl in the hospital bed.

Except that is a lie, too, because, when it comes to her, she remembers everything and anything.

Like:

Hannah; only three years older but it looks like a decade has passed. Her hands are cold, her bald head is covered by a soft hat and her skin is so translucent the blue veins underneath stand out grotesquely.

"Mom?"

"Yes, love?"

"You and Dad, you should get together again. I know you still love him. I'm sure he loves you, too."

"Hannah, your dad and I have been separated for years now. You can't just make that distance disappear."

"But you could at least try, Mom, couldn't you? Please."

Hannah's grip, despite her fatally weakened body, is strong.

 _"_ _Please_."

"Why is this so important to you, love?"

"I don't want you to be alone when I leave, Mom. And Dad shouldn't be, either. Please. Is there no way?"

Acceptance, the final stage.

Hannah never gave up.

Hannah has railed and screamed and fought, fought all the way through the diagnosis, the therapy, the final treatments. She has fought the world, fought the teachers that treated her differently, the doctors that tried to get her to speak to a counselor, fought her homework and the world and her parents. Hannah is a fighter, always has been. The fact that she is calm now – Louise knows what it means.

She has known for a long, long time already.

 _You chose this_ , she tells herself, feels the time ticking away. _You chose._ So she holds on to her dying daughter's hand as strongly as she dares to, and smiles, and tells her how much she loves her. That she will try. That she needn't worry. _(A mother shouldn't tell her child not to worry about her. A mother should be worrying about her child, always and only, should be laughing and rolling her eyes and chastising. A mother shouldn't watch her child die.)_ And finally the day comes, and the day passes: at the end of it, her daughter is dead and her husband is still gone and there is no place for her to go but back.

 _"_ _Let's go home, Mommy!"_

 _It was Hannah's day out with her father. Usually, Ian would deliver her back home by himself, drop his daughter off at her door step and depart without them ever meeting. But today something important came up. His voice on the phone, when he called her, was stiff and formal._

 _"_ _Could you pick Hannah up, please? Something came up at the Institute."_

 _Her first reaction is to ask him whether he knows he will only have so much time with his daughter, but that part is born from the lonely, the bitter part of her soul. The part which she hates, and would rather not see. Instead, she says yes, of course, I'll be there in half an hour, and Ian thanks her with words so wooden and polite that it hurts her almost physically._

 _He took Hannah to the county fair that day, the scent of chocolate, popcorn and ice cream mixes with the trampled grass and human sweat. It is a glorious day, hot and blue-skyed, and suddenly Louise wants to enjoy the fair, too. Hannah is all for it; they eat another ice cream and ride the scooter and the carousel, they watch a bird show and laugh at the huge vegetables on display, and the sun slowly sinks._

 _"_ _Let's go home, Mommy!"_

 _Hannah is sweaty and sticky and everything an eight-year-old generally is after a day out, her blond hair is in complete disarray and she smiles so brightly it makes Louise forget anything else._

 _They drive back in silence, Hannah's soft humming filling the car until it stops, as well. Louise thinks her daughter has fallen asleep when a soft, small voice asks:_

 _"_ _Mommy?"_

 _"_ _Yes, love?"_

 _From Hannah's voice she can tell it is an important question, something that is the world for a twelve-year-old. She looks into the rearview mirror and sees Hannah's eyes wide open and questioning._

 _"_ _Do you still love Daddy?"_

 _The question is completely unanticipated. It hits her like a truck, a mental shove that breaks open so many things and lays bare so many scars she thought had scabbed over and had stopped hurting. She tries to save herself by focusing on her daughter._

 _"_ _Why are you asking, love?"_

 _"_ _Cause I still love Daddy, even if he left us, so I thought maybe you still love him, too."_

 _Children's logic, so simple, so unfaultable._

 _The simple answer would be to explain differences in love, gradients, I still love him as a friend, but really, how do you explain the difference to a child? Especially since children are so much more clever than adults, sometimes._

 _"_ _Cause you always look at his picture." She should have locked it away – "And you look sad when you do."_

 _Hannah's face is clouded, worried and sad. She's clenching her fists against her chest, part worried, part tired, and she looks younger than she is. And Louise really shouldn't tell her the truth, but–_

 _"_ _Yes," she whispers. Answers Hannah's gaze in the mirror. "Yes, love, I still love your Daddy very, very much. And I love you as much as I love him."_

 _The truth, and nothing but the truth. She denied Ian the truth once. She does not want to repeat that mistake, that one mistake that was none._

 _The mistake Ian never forgave her._

It is still there, right in his eyes, for all the world to see: how much he resents her for it.

It is a suffocating, heart-wrenchingly terrible thing, the funeral, where Hannah's friends from school are in tears and the sun is up and bright. There are the mothers of many of Hannah's classmates, women she not knows or knows and some of them she even likes. They offer pity and help and condolences. Louise prefers the children, some of them in tears – some of them laughing and playing, whisper-soft because they know something somber is happening but not the depth of the misery around them. She watches them when she cannot talk anymore, cannot listen to pretend-lighthearted stories that are supposed to take her mind off her beautiful daughter. Her beautiful, silent daughter. She remembers the days when she walked, talked, laughed – even those when she screamed at Louise, when she was angry, when she was nosy and annoying and willful. These are not the flashes of memory – _visions,_ Ian would call them, because it's the future and not the past so how can she _remember_ – but _memories_ , true, unaltered memories of her child. And they are agonizing and suffocating and devastating, and, the worst is: Ian is in each one of them.

Ian is as far away as Hannah is, but he is _alive._

"Our thoughts and prayers are with you," the old priest says and he _means_ it, and that means something to Louise but it _is not enough_. Still, she thanks him, tearless. She stays at the grave long after everyone else has left, just looking and waiting and waiting for nothing. There is no reason why she finally turns around and leaves, nothing she has to do, nothing of importance, and yet – she does. She turns around and leaves her beautiful baby girl behind in the dark, cold earth, and as she turns she catches a flash of golden hair and grey eyes and grief so great it makes her heart shatter all over again.

But when she turns, Ian is not there.

So she calls a cab and goes back to the empty house with its empty rooms and its empty heart, and the only thing she can think is oh Hannah Hannah Hannah my love I wish you could have had more time on this world Hannah Hannah Hannah –

 _"_ _Mommy!"_

 _They are on the beach, Hannah and her, building a sand castle with more speed than precision as the shore laps at its feet, and someone tackles her from behind and she over-balances and falls into him, a warm, strong body, familiar as her own. They drop into the haphazard castle, Louise protesting, Ian laughing, cradling her to him as if she was the most precious thing on earth, and instead of protesting that they've ruined her work Hannah laughs and drops on top of her, too, a warm, heavy weight. There's sand everywhere and suddenly a large wave crashes over them, leaves them sputtering and wet, and Hannah is laughing, and Ian is tickling her, his warmth and his joy and his love spilling over to Louise, going straight to her heart and mind. And Hannah jumps up, still giggling, and runs, "Catch me if you can!", and Ian calls after her how unfair, he can't get up, Mommy is too heavy, and she whacks him on the head and his laugh is the best sound in the world. Together, they watch their daughter sprint down the beach, and then Louise looks at him and kind of thinks, Ian, I l-, and he kisses her – sand and salt and Ian – and Louise –_

Louise goes back to teaching.

It's what she does, what she does best. When the pitying glances and heart-felt but empty words become too much, she buries herself in her work. She has a book to write. In the past years, she and many other linguists have tirelessly worked on deconstructing and reconstructing the heptapod's gift; on tearing it apart just for the sake of assembling it again. She has spent hours on it, months, a lifetime. Dr. Louise Banks is the leading linguist when it comes to the stranger's language, she has published papers in _Nature_ and _Science_ and other most prestigious journals. She has been cited over a thousand times. It's time for the book.

The box arrives one afternoon, sunshine and cool wind and unsettling seas.

It's heavy – she carries it from the front door to the living room and uses a knife to open it. Out come fifteen copies of her first edition – still smelling like ink and printing press and _work, finally accomplished_. Louise takes one into her hands and opens it. The paper is sturdy and crackles softly against her hand. On the inside, it reads:

 _To Hannah_

It is the first thing the people see when they open her book. In a way, it is fitting: for a long, long time Hannah has been that part of her life, the foremost part, the most important first page. But a mother without a child is not a mother, and a book without content is just empty pages.

Sometimes, Louise feels empty, too.

Her brother phones to tell her he received her parcel.

"Well done, sister mine. Now I can publish my biography: _My Sister is a Bestselling Author._ "

They laugh together, discuss their parents, news, old stories and memories. Agree to meet up soon. When the lull in the conversation signals the nearing end of the call, Ben hesitates just a second too long and then asks:

"When did you prepare the acknowledgements, anyway?"

"Just before publication. Why?"

"Because-" He hesitates again, then plunges forward, she can feel him gather all his determination. "Ian's in there."

Indeed, he is. The last word in the acknowledgements section, the last name in her list of the many people that contributed to her work. Nothing else, just his name: _Ian._ She expected Ben to notice – her brother is observant like that.

"He was there in Montana, too. When we first encountered the heptapods."

"Oh, yeah." Ben sounds like there is more he wants to say, but, in the end, he does not. Both of them know there is more. Both of them choose not to say anything. Louise is thankful, and she is not.

Nowadays, it is so difficult to keep track of her own emotions. As a child, when she was too upset, or when something bad had happened, her mother used to read to her and Ben. Louise can still remember her mother's voice inflection, the intonation, the pauses. The images she created by re-telling old stories, or inventing new ones. Later, she read to herself – and then, Ian did.

She wishes Ian would read to her again, now.

 _It always was something in his voice that calmed her._

 _Well, not always – sometimes there's something in his voice that arouses her to no ends – but even though she knows that, she'd never anticipated this._

 _They are in the hospital, she has been in labor for sixteen hours now and despite the medication the pain is still very much real. And Louise is clinging to Ian's hand while her mother fusses around her, and, in the din of the birthing room, Ian is reading to her._

 _It's his thesis, the one he's been working on for the last year, the one that will eventually earn him the title of a professor. It's theoretical physics all over; she just knows it has something to do with radiation and waves and sound. It's based on their investigation in the Clam, two years or so ago, and she is not disinterested per say. This merely is scarcely is the right moment to try and understand physics._

 _But the language is beautiful._

 _She focuses on the single words, the way Ian's lips shape around them, the way his tongue rolls and moves. The way they sound soft when he pronounces them, dance through the air and towards her. He reads softly, steadily, and as another contraction rolls through her she grips his hand tighter and clenches her teeth, and thinks, you will be worth it, you will be worth any second of pain. Hannah, my love, see the world. Come on._

 _And when finally, finally, her baby is put into her arms and she is sweaty and bloody and exhausted, Ian leans over her and she hands their daughter to him, and it is the most beautiful picture she's ever seen before: the way he holds Hannah, his love for her so plain in his eyes, and his love for Louise so clear in every line of his body._

 _"_ _Welcome, Hannah," he whispers and Louise feels tears stream down her face. Ian puts their child back into her arms and leans down to kiss her._

 _"_ _Sleep," he whispers. "You must be tired. I'll keep watch. Sleep, love."_

 _..._

But that's more easily said than done, these days.

* * *

 **Third Movement, Allargando**

Sleep evades her more often than not.

They're like a labyrinth, these memories of hers, memories of the past and the future and something in between. They twist and turn, follow bends and curves she can neither predict nor follow. No beginning, no end. It is dizzying, in a way, and frightening in many others. If she had still been human enough to feel fear. Sometimes she thinks she is not, anymore. If she was, how could she remember everything that hasn't happened yet, and everything that has?

 _Non-linear time._

Time is a labyrinth anyway, isn't it? Usually, labyrinths like these are crossed with a golden thread spun from someone else's love. But things like that probably do not apply to women who have seen extra-terrestrial beings and communicated with them. Louise's too realistic, too experienced, to still believe in being saved.

Besides, Ian's not coming back.

...

"I'm fine, Mom, really."

"Are you sure? I could come over for some weeks, you know? Ben said you looked tired the last time you met. Are you eating enough? You always were too thin, even before–"

"I am eating enough, yes, Mom, and I was tired because I worked on a manuscript the night before I met up with Ben."

"You know it's important to get enough sleep, your body cannot regenerate otherwise."

She suppresses a roll of her eyes. "I know, Mom."

"And make sure to go outside, too. Twenty minutes of fresh air, at least, every day! Don't do that fancy running thing, just walk somewhere, at the beach, for example, you have to take a break now and then…"

It's almost funny how her mother is more motherly than ever before now that both her children are grown-up. The thought is painful, reminding Louise of what she lost.

"Mom, I got to go. I'll call you again on Sunday, alright?"

"Alright, love. Take care, okay?"

"Bye!"

Louise drops into bed without even undressing, bone-tired and exhausted and still unable to fall asleep. The full moon over the sea is iridescent, on nights like these Ian used to open the blinds and leave the window open for the fresh sea air. When he looked at her those nights she felt like the sea, too, like a shining world. Now, she isn't sure whether her world is dead or just…

 _Empty_.

On nights like these, she can hear his voice.

 _"_ _Louise."_

 _His eyes are grey like the storm, grey like the ocean, grey-as-grey – and yet, gentle. She watches him leaning over her, never once looks away._

 _"_ _Louise," he whispers, his voice rough and breathless. The way his pupils dilate to a point where his eyes are almost black and she can see herself in them is exhilarating, because she knows it is her that has brought him to the brink of what lies between love and need. It is her who –_

 _He leans down, his gaze never once leaving hers, his teeth graze over sensitive skin and she gasps, there is no air left in her lungs, nothing else matters, so she takes his head into her hands and kisses him, breathes in the air he exhales, tastes him and devours him until they are both gasping for air. The way he moves against her is intoxicating._

 _She didn't want to go this fast, didn't want to take him home after their first date already. But when he accompanied her back to the house he was smiling so widely, and listening so attentively, that she just stood there, at a loss, not wanting to let him go, not knowing whether – whether. So she stands there and watches the humor fade from his lips and his face and his eyes, watches how it is replaced by something that makes her shiver, makes every molecule in her body ache for him, watches and watches and feels him watching her until something saves them from themselves; they collide like stars, burning, and the fire spreads until he is everything she can see, hear, taste and feel._

 _In the moonlight-filled darkness of her home Ian carefully removes her clothes, piece by piece, and she has never felt more beautiful_ _._

 _Come morning, she will wake up, his breath fanning over her cheek and his hair tickling her, and she will know, without doubt, without any question, that this – this is it for her. This is the man she wants to spend eternity with._

 _As if feeling her eyes on him, Ian wakes up, quietly, just the way she imagines he always does. Both eyes open, focus, they are awake and watchful. An almost instant transition between sleep and wakefulness, something she knows she will never manage. His lips form a smile, the one she has watched so often, the one that makes it seem as if he's surprised at seeing her, as if the smile was an instinctive reaction at her sight. Then, he asks –_

"Why are you calling, Louise?"

She's cradling the phone to her ear so tightly she can feel her blood pump through her veins. Her hand is growing numb. She doesn't lighten her grip.

"I-"

 _I don't know._

Except that would be a lie, because she knows exactly why she is calling, and also what he will say. Ian sounds tired, empty. Just the way she feels. How can they be so similar and yet not fit? Like two puzzle pieces taken from entirely different sets. Only that's not true because they did fit, once upon a time. She refuses to believe they changed enough to never fit again, but she also knows that wishing for something does not necessarily make it come true.

And why is she doing this to herself?

"I'm sorry, you know."

She's said it before. She's said it so, so many times. Has she ever said it to him, she wonders, and then she wonders why she can't recall. Shouldn't she be able to distinguish between reality and dreams?

"I dreamed of you."

She can hear his intake of breath. She counts her heart beats.

"Did I ever tell you? I dreamed of you, even before I met you. It had nothing to do with the heptapods, or whatever. I always knew it would be you."

Ian is still not answering. Too late, she realizes he could be with someone else. It has been almost two years since the funeral. Many more since he left her. He could have moved on – the thought hits her so hard that her breath hitches. Who in his right mind calls up on an ex-husband and starts blubbering away like this? He must think her crazy. Why is it that, after all this time, she still dreams of him in a way that seems more real than reality around her?

"Say something, Ian," she whispers. "Please."

The dial tone drowns out the rushing sound in her ears.

 _Her heart is racing. The hand that is holding the receiver is cradling it so desperately that she can feel her palms breaking a sweat._

 _"_ _It's me, Louise."_

 _"_ _Hi."_

 _He clears his throat. "Hi. How are you?"_

 _"_ _Fine, thanks. And you?"_

 _"_ _Great. No aliens anywhere in sight."_

 _"_ _Good."_

 _Pause, awkward. It grows longer and longer until he finally breaks it._

 _"_ _Listen, Louise, I wanted to ask – but then, you called me first, so I probably shouldn't…"_

 _"_ _What?"_

 _"_ _Jesus, this is awkward." He laughs. His laughter is infectious; Louise starts giggling, too. They laugh like two silly teenagers sharing a joke only the two of them can understand._

 _"_ _Would you like to go out for dinner tomorrow?"_

 _Silence._

 _"_ _You are amazing," Ian says, and the adoration in his voice is so sincere her heart beat picks up even more. "Yes, I would love to. And – I know I should have called you. And I should have asked you out. I am a failure of a man – sorry you had to do the job yourself."_

 _The honesty – and all the things that make him Ian – close up her throat. "I don't mind."_

 _"_ _I'll pick you up tomorrow?" He offers. "Maybe that'll regain me some points for gentlemanliness."_

 _"_ _When?"_

 _"_ _At seven?"_

 _"_ _Yes."_

 _"_ _I'm looking forward to tomorrow."_

 _"_ _Me too."_

 _After the call disconnects, Louise sits on her bed and stares at the wall, and she can't remember anything of that moment but her fast-beating heart and the sound of his smile._

 _When he picks her up the next day he brings her a flower in a pot – because he's a scientist and doesn't believe in cut flowers, but says that flowers can never be wrong – and the light in his eyes is enough to make her fall._

 _He leaves for a business trip to Europe the day after, is gone for almost two months. But he calls her regularly. She gets so used to hearing his voice over the phone that when he actually stands in front of her she can't stop herself from reaching out –_

"Louise."

She did not anticipate him, did not expect him – couldn't even have imagined him here. And yet, there he is. The ocean in the corner of her vision continues to lap at the shore, but the sound of waves ceases abruptly.

She snatches back her hand as if burned.

Ian looks as if she'd just pole-axed him. Or whatever. Her fingers that never touched him tingle with the memory/knowledge/vision of his warmth.

"What are you doing here?"

"I."

Her voice breaks, she clears her throat. Looks anywhere except at him and yet watches him from the corner of her eyes. It is like she cannot help herself: it has been months – _years?_ – that she saw him for the last time, in flesh, breathing. She would have thought six years since their separation would have made her fall out of love with him. It feels like the opposite: she can't look at him because there is so much she feels, right that moment, the _oh God he looks like always_ and the _he looks older and tired,_ the sensation of knowing all of him and yet seeing a stranger – and still, unerringly, her heart shifts towards him like it always did because she _knows._ It's _Ian_. There are a myriad of worlds in which they never met, or never fell in love, or never even survived, worlds in which they married but she never got pregnant, worlds in which they married but divorced when she refused to have a baby. But there is not a single world in which she would not recognize him. Worlds, so many worlds and memories, and in each one the same thing: Ian. And in this world: Ian and Hannah, and she would not exchange it for any other one.

"We came here with Hannah."

In his eyes, she can see he remembers, too.

Maybe it's this last piece they share – _Hannah_ – that makes him sit down on the ground. Far enough to not even accidentally touch, but _there._ Numbly, she sinks down into the sand, as well. It is warm. Hannah died in summer.

Hannah _lived_ in summer.

"You built a sand castle. It was a catastrophe."

"I'm a linguist, not an architect. You crashed it."

 _His arms around her, his lips on hers. Her scattered thoughts suddenly focusing into one, crystal-clear thread._

"She jumped down from a rock and scraped her knee."

Ian's voice catches. He's still not looking at her.

The memory is fresh, as if it had only happened a day ago. Who knows? Maybe it has.

"She did not cry."

"Because she did not want to seem weak in your eyes." Louise remembers her daughter's face, the way her chin wavered but her eyes burned stubbornly. "She adored you."

 _I love you._

"I left – I left the two of you. I shouldn't have."

It sounds like he has said the words often before, and still they break him a little bit more every time. Her heart hurts so much she wants to tear it out and trample it so she doesn't ever need to feel anything, anymore.

"I should not have kept it from you."

They sit there and do not look at each other. Half a meter feels like a universe.

"Do you ever think it was a mistake?"

Louise freezes, caught in his eyes. Maybe this is a test. Maybe he's once again looking for a reason to fight her. God knows it has happened before, and Heaven knows she rarely was the innocent party. Only the Ian she knows it not cruel, never was. He wouldn't ask something like that _here_ , of all of the places he could.

"No."

He breathes out, as if relieved.

"Would you do it again?"

 _Always._

"I don't know."

And suddenly, he's looking at her, gentle grey eyes, grief-filled but unchanged. _Her_ Ian shining through the tired, broken man next to her, _Ian_ , his smile so familiar and honest her breath catches in her throat.

"Oh, Louise, you always were a bad liar."

...

They shared so much, once upon a time.

Months in an enclosed space, spending their days puzzling over an alien language, their nights trying to teach said aliens their own language. Working, hoping. Discussing. They spent hours and hours together, learning from each other, talking to each other – it would have been impossible not to grow close. Impossible not to love him. Maybe these are the only things they still share: the sunrise over the fields of Montana, the dark orb of Abbot's and Costello's ship always in their peripheral vision. The food, tasteless to boring, eaten just for the sake of conserving their strength. Ian's face, _we did it,_ his smile, his frown, _what are you doing?_ And, his answer: _I trust you._

They share the memory of two years of being together, the memories of their wedding day, of Hannah's birth. Hours, weeks, months and years added up into innumerable heartbeats, of which each of hers either sounds out the name of their dead daughter – or his. Moments, so many moments.

How can she ever look at him and not think _mine?_

And suddenly, she understands.

Her thoughts, her mind. It's not a labyrinth. It's a circle, a path towards the middle, it's her life and her time and her memory that lead her. She might walk in what feels like forever, but there is a center: there is an origin. Whether she walks away from it or towards it won't matter, because she will always reach her destination; she will forever journey along the lines that created her life.

And in the center of it all Ian is waiting, looking at her like –

...

His arms wrap around her, incredibly carefully, like he doesn't know what to do with them instead. And then she's in his arms, breathes in his scent and buries her face in the junction between his neck and his shoulder, and _oh God I missed you so, so much,_ and -

 _They are on the fields of Montana, watching as the place that has been their living space for the past two months is quickly and professionally disassembled, the sound of helicopters and jeeps surrounding them like they are in a bee hive. Within them, everything is silent._

 _"_ _If you knew exactly how your life would be like, would you change anything?"_

 _He looks at her from the corner of his eyes, shy and intense at the same time. "Dunno. Maybe I would say what I feel more often."_

 _It's almost tentative, laden with meaning, and she can't help the splutter her heart gives, as if these few words are the words she has been longing to hear her entire life._

 _"_ _What about you? Would you change anything?"_

 _The answer is clear. She wants this. She wants the future and the husband and the daughter, she wants happiness, and even if it is short-lived she wants all those shining moments, those blissful memories. She wants the pain and the happiness, the warmth and the loneliness; she wants it all with an intensity that scares her. There was a book, once, a children's book, her mother read it to her when she was small. She still remembers her mother's voice as she finished the story always with the same words._ Collect the good and the bad and pile up the years. _Louise wants all that – a child and a life and a future, and even the pain that comes with it. And, most of all, she wants the man at her side, so kind and so clever and so, so wonderful._

 _"_ _No." It comes out as a whisper, almost swallowed again. "No, I wouldn't."_

 _He turns towards her, or maybe she turns towards him, he touches her shoulder and she carefully takes hold of his arm, and then his arms are around her and the world ceases to exist. It's just Ian and her, together, thinking nothing, just holding each other, and she whispers –_

 _"_ _I forgot how good it feels to be in your arms."_

\- Ian's arms tighten around her, and Louise cries.

* * *

 **Overture**

She simply appears in his life, one day, looking back at his silly attempt to introduce himself with nothing but questions in her eyes. It's not until he tells her that science is the fundament of everything human, not language, that she finally smiles at him over the din of the helicopter. A tired, yet beautiful woman with her brown-blonde hair haphazardly pulled up into a ponytail and blue, piercing eyes.

He cannot know, at this point in time, that together, they will find the solution to the mystery that the heptapods are, that together, they will almost save humanity. He cannot know that he will look at her, day after day, and marvel at how clever she is, how brilliant, how beautiful. He cannot know he will fall in love with her, with her clever tongue, her incredible skill and knowledge, with her tired eyes and her ever-moving hands and the way she hums to herself when she prepares dinner. He cannot know that they will marry and have a child, and that their daughter will have an incurable, unknown illness that will tear her out of her life at the age of twelve. He cannot know that Louise always knew, that she will tell him eventually and that it, somehow, will break something within him. He cannot know that he will leave, that, over years, he will only see his ex-wife from far and his daughter at the weekend, and that, eventually, she will be too weak to spend time with him. He cannot know Hannah will die. He cannot know that he will bury himself in work and everything else, even trying to form a new family, but that the woman he chooses will leave him again, saying that it's for his own good. He cannot know that, two years after his daughter's death, he will return to a place that always was hers in his mind, and will encounter his ex-wife. He cannot know how he will react. He is a scientist. Logic dictates he cannot possibly know all of this.

Ian doesn't know right then, but he realizes later.

 _Forever._


End file.
